Catch of the day: Live bombs

Saturday

Apr 24, 2010 at 2:00 AM

NEW BEDFORD — As many as 100 vintage hand grenades — at least several of which still contained live explosives — were blown up in a controlled blast last night after Fair Tide Shellfish employees found the weapons while sifting through the haul of a clam boat.

Dan McDonald

NEW BEDFORD — As many as 100 vintage hand grenades — at least several of which still contained live explosives — were blown up in a controlled blast last night after Fair Tide Shellfish employees found the weapons while sifting through the haul of a clam boat.

The explosion sent a large plume of gray and black smoke over the city's hurricane barrier after the police detonated the grenades near the Gifford Street boat ramp at 7:23 p.m.

Clammers on a boat fishing in the mid-Atlantic made the unexpected catch, which went unnoticed until the vessel's arrival at the Wright Street shellfish plant yesterday.

"They looked like square lumps of coal. It's not until you pick one up that you go 'Whoa,'" said Tom Slaughter, owner of Fair Tide Shellfish.

The incident prompted the business to evacuate its employees and authorities to shut the road down and halt some boat traffic in the area.

The clammers who unintentionally harvested the grenades were using a vacuum-like device to suck up their catch from the ocean floor into basket-like cages on their boat, New Bedford police Detective Gregory Sirois said.

The vacuum device also sucked up the explosives. But workers didn't realize what had happened because the cages are transported directly from the boat onto a truck.

The truck then delivers the catch to the plant, where it is sorted.

After employees discovered the "pineapple" grenades, which were estimated to be more than 50 years old, they placed the explosives in a half dozen 5-gallon plastic buckets on the outside of the plant before all 40 or so workers were evacuated around 3:30 p.m.

The police shut down a half-mile stretch of Wright Street for more than three hours as members of the State Police Bomb Squad and the U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit investigated.

Those authorities determined "several" of the grenades were still live, Sirois said. Some grenades still had their activation pins, while others did not, he said.

Slaughter said pulling explosive devices from the ocean is not a rarity in the fishing industry. "I've probably dragged up 10,000 pounds worth of ammunition during my time," said Slaughter, who has owned Fair Tide Shellfish for 13 years.

However, he said it is unusual for there to be this many grenades or other discarded weapons in one catch. Some of the grenades recovered yesterday were still in cases that appeared to be designed for eight of the devices, he said.

Slaughter said the grenades were likely sucked up from the ocean off the coast of either New York or New Jersey.

Authorities moved the grenades, which were either from World War II or the Korean War, from the plastic buckets to the sand-filled bed of a city public works truck.

John Belmarce, a night emergency response supervisor for the city, drove the truck two minutes down the road to Gilford Street then to the city's hurricane barrier, stopping at a small outcropping that jutted slightly into the water. Belmarce was escorted by a caravan of police cruisers, city trucks and fire department vehicles flashing emergency lights.

Belmarce, a Desert Storm Army veteran who detailed the five-second blast delay of the grenades and described how the blast radius of grenades has grown in recent decades, appeared to relish rather than balk at the opportunity to transport the explosives.

"I would volunteer for this kind of stuff. It's where the action is," Belmarce said.

He joked that it made sense for him to be the driver because "all the other guys have families. I live with a chihuahua."

The grenades were moved from the truck onto the scrabble of rock that poked out into the harbor.

Emergency workers could be seen digging sand on the outcropping. That specific area of hurricane wall has a hard-packed floor that can handle an explosion, a fire department official said.

Authorities were on the hurricane wall for more than an hour, working while three news helicopters hovered overhead and small pockets of people lined the industrial properties that overlook the bay and hurricane wall.

Boats were not allowed to use the passage that cuts through a portion of the hurricane wall while the emergency crews worked.

Authorities cleared the hurricane wall, driving their vehicles off the jetty back to the Gifford Street boat ramp area, and the grenades were detonated at 7:23 p.m.

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